Hello everyone, and thanks for reading. I hope you enjoy this chapter and next Fridays chapter will be, Chapter 8, 'Dumbledore Spills The Beans." It will be where you start finding out some of the things Harry went through while he was away. Thanks again for reading, and any comments are welcome.

ashfig; Hey Ashley, thank you so much for reading and commenting. You are very sweet to say my story is amazing. I'm glad you like it. Hope this chapter is to your liking as well.



Chapter 7

Nearly Killed By His Mentor

“Harry!” Ginny screamed as she rushed to him. She gently cradled his head in her lap. “Daddy? Daddy is he dead? He’s so still. I can’t feel him breathing.”

Arthur put his hand over his heart and silently begged it to please be beating. Then he sighed with relief. “Yes, he is alive, but only just. He started lifting the matted down bloody hair from the side of Harry’s face, to check the extent of his injury.

“But how can this be Harry? He doesn’t look anything like him. He doesn’t sound like him, and he doesn’t even act like him! It can’t be him.” Ron said as he looked worriedly at the young man he knew really was Harry.

“Would you people quit gawking at him and tend to his injuries?” demanded an irate Professor Snape.


“Yes, and do please tell us how he is in this dire state of need. He was perfectly happy and uninjured when we arrived here late this afternoon.” Dumbledore continued for Snape with a calm voice, but definitely not the least bit happy with the situation at hand.

“Shall we start at the beginning while Molly and Minerva attend to our splendid young man?” Snape and Dumbledore looked at them expectantly.

Mr. Weasley spoke. “That would be me starting then. Yes, well, I popped home just outside the yard and quickly examined the area for magic used in the area. It all happened so quickly. It was fixing to blow in a big storm. The wind, thunder and lightening was something fierce. I found an area that was still charged with magic. There was a round rock over the spot, and I picked it up to examine the area. All at once, a loud clap of thunder boomed and lightening lit up the sky. I looked up just in time to see a gold bolt of light from right beside me shoot our house. I could tell that it was a powerful wizard to be able to shoot a stream of magic from that distance and hit the house. I tackled it with my left hand just above the streamline. I was lucky and my hand met his throat. My weight and momentum carried me to the ground and I landed over him. I got up and planted my knee on him and I still had a good hold on his throat. He was very strong and had nearly pushed me off him. I brought my right hand around, knowing where his head was then; I hit him on the left side of his head. However, I forgot I still had the rock in my hand. As soon as I hit him, he stopped struggling.

It terrified me. I tried to lower the invisibility charm around him, but couldn’t do it. I tried to feel for a pulse, but his beard and hair was in the way. All I could find out was that he was bleeding badly, because there was a pole of blood gathering. I picked him up, brought him in here, and laid him on the table. I told everyone he was a powerful wizard and that he had fired a spell on the house. We were enraged, and were feeling good because we thought we caught the villain the threat came from.”

“What threat would that be?” Snape asked, clearly not enjoying the explanation so far.

“This one.” answered Bill, getting a note on a piece of parchment. “It says that Harry Potter is dead, and that he left a will for Ginny to inherit everything. It left us an ultimatum. We were to arrange for Ginny to marry one of them, or our world as we know it was going to end tonight if we didn’t comply.”

“What?” Ginny asked abruptly. “I didn’t know anything about this. When did all this take place?”

“You were playing in your last three games of the season Ginny dear. We didn’t want to distract you.” We had everything under control. Molly explained.

“Ah, so understandably you were concerned for the safety and well being of your family and home, as you should be. What did you do then to make sure you had the right man, instead of tending to the injuries?” They all squirmed under the weight of guilt he was loading on them.

“Well Sir,” Hermione started apologetically. “He was invisible so we couldn’t see what needed fixed or how to fix it.” As soon as she said it, she wished she hadn’t.

“So the bleeding had stopped then. There wasn’t anymore blood dripping onto the table when he was laid down?” asked Dumbledore. He turned his eyes on the table to see a pool of blood.

“We thought he was trying to kill us!” she came back. “We were glad we caught him, his safety and well being, wasn’t on our priority list. Except for Mrs. Weasley,” she added softly. We wanted to try to remove his invisibility spell, and couldn’t, so we were trying to get an idea of how big he was for when he came around. We didn’t want to allow him to over power us and get away. Mrs. Weasley wouldn’t let us bind him for fear of doing more damage to him. So, we all held him. In doing that, we could tell he was on the shorter side of average height. Also, we could tell he had a very good build. I mean his skin was tight over hard muscles even though he wasn’t using them. He is very lean, no fat on him at all and…”

“Come on Mione, he’s not all that…”

“Yes he is! RONALD!” Put in Ginny defensively. She sat at Harry’s feet to give her mom and Professor McGonagall room to tend to him. Molly had his hair cleaned of the blood and wanted to cut it so it would heal better. However, Ginny forbid it, and she continued on applying a bandage wrapping it around his head to secure it. Minerva poured a sticky substance over his upper groin suspecting torn muscles from Arthur’s knee. The substance absorbed into Harry. Then she poured some on his throat where he was choked. “That won’t mend them altogether, but, it’ll allow them to at least be more bearable.”

“Unless someone needs to jerk him around some more.” Ginny snapped at Ron.

“I was only trying to get him to…”

“Can we please move along without the offense and defense teams?” Snape said impatiently, sneering at Ron and Ginny.

“It was at this time I asked Ron to go out and see if he could find the wand.” Arthur continued quickly. It wasn’t in his hand when I brought him in.”

“And I did to! Out in the night and the pouring freezing rain, with the thunder and lightening I went out there.” he put in. With an afterthought he said, “That was childish of me. I’m sorry. Something I’m working on,” he added softly and hung his head.

Hermione squeezed his hand and gave him a small smile. She was proud of him.

“While Ron was searching for the wand, we began discussing the reason Kingsley and I was here. We each received a note requesting us to meet out here tonight. We wondered if it came from Harry, but the handwriting looked like yours Albus. We couldn’t figure it coming from Harry because his handwriting is atrocious, but still for some reason we thought we were summoned out here for his coming home. That’s when Ron ran in and announced he found the wand.”

“So in all you would say the amount of time he bled on the table and while he was proving who he was maybe forty minutes?” Dumbledore inquired.

“Yes, that’s probably close to accurate.” Bill answered.

“So, he has lost a considerable amount of blood. Then he passed out because of this and the obvious pain from trauma, and not from other injuries we don’t know about.” Everyone nodded their heads with mixed emotions. They were hopeful that he would be ok, and sad that they didn’t believe him right away.

“The note was from Harry, Minerva. You had that figured nicely. The reason it looks like my handwriting is because when he asked us to make a list of everything he would need to finish school, I put some of my manuscripts on it. Then when we started his studies, the first thing I made him do was trace my writing repeatedly until it could pass as mine. We told him we wouldn’t even look at his work until his writing was decent. It would be a waist of everybody’s time if we couldn’t read his work. So, he mastered it, and I must say Severus and I are quite pleased with his work and accomplishments.” he said with a proud nod of his head and a twinkle in his eyes.

“Yes we are,” added Snape with a smile on his face, as he looked at Harry lying on the couch.

Ron spoke up. “I don’t mean to sound rude or anything, but why is it you talk so highly of him now? You always said he was stupid and his brain was the size of a pea or something like that. And, why does he call you Poppa? And you … actually … smile at him.”

To everyone’s surprise, Snape smiled. “Let’s just say Harry is a man of his word, and that he … altered my opinion about the size of his brain.”

“Oh come now Severus. I thought the smile was very becoming of you. I wasn’t fond of the Mohawk, but, the earrings were a nice touch.” Dumbledore was having fun with Severus’s embarrassment, as everyone was looking at him with their mouths dropped open and eyebrows arched to the top of their heads.

“Oh my! Is that why you wouldn’t visit Hogwarts for a week?” Minerva questioned with a smile coming to her face at the image her imagination gave her.

“Can we just get on with the matter at hand?” Snape asked grumpily.

“Yes, of course,” Dumbledore cleared his throat and reminded them where the story left off at. “I believe Ron had just found the wand and ran in with it.”

“Yes, and he got it away from me. It just appeared in his hand. We didn’t know he woke up. He didn’t move a muscle.”

“Ah yes, you see,” Dumbledore explained, “he trained himself to do that because when sleeping in the jungle, you need to not make sudden movements when you wake, because you might have poisonous bed partners when you wake up, and they don’t like being startled.”

They stared at Harry wondering how many times that happened until he was trained not to move.

“Anyway,” Hermione snapped out of her thoughts. “He had the wand and told us all to move over there. We couldn’t see where he was pointing ‘because he was still invisible. Everyone moved away from him, except me. I still had a great big handful of his hair holding him tight to the table. All the sudden he had my wrist and squeezed it so hard I thought it was going to break. He let go right away. I think he realized it was a female was holding him. I don’t blame him for hurting me though. It had to have hurt him, me holding him down by his hair. When I screamed he froze Ron who was going to save me. He got up too fast I think because he fell between Ginny and Mrs. Weasley and then stumbled into the counter behind him. He said, … well he said that phrase that you can never go home, and that he needed to see Bill, Kingsley, and Professor McGonagall. Mr. Weasley said to lower his invisibility so we could see who he was. He had forgotten it was still on, and he was sure we’d know him when he lowered it, because he was smiling when he became visible.”

“We still didn’t know him,” Arthur picked up the story, only to be interrupted by Ginny.

“Ron got pushy with him, after he told us who he was. He told him to take off his shirt so we could see his scars that nobody knows about but us. That’s when he switched his clothes to this thingy he’s wearing now.”

Ron counter attacked Ginny to defend the reasoning for his rough treatment of Harry. “Well, he said he was Harry Potter and yet he doesn’t look sound or act like Harry. His voice is all scratchy and deeper. He doesn’t have glasses”

“Perhaps he lost them when he was tackled to the ground,” suggested Dumbledore.

“Or when he was battered to near death with a rock.” added Snape. “And his voice would sound that way being strangled as he had been.

“Perchance someone might go to the door and see if they can summon his glasses,” proposed Dumbledore.

Ron went to the kitchen door and spoke, “Accio Harry Potter’s glasses!”

In a few seconds, Harry’s broken glasses zoomed to his hands. He took them in and Mr. Weasley repaired and cleaned them. He was holding them and folded them closed.

“So, like Ron was saying, he wasn’t wearing glasses, he has a beard and mustache, his hair is long and curly down to his lower back, and his skin is weathered and quite tanned. He isn’t skinny, but lean. He has muscles all over him, not huge, but certainly much more than what we remember him having. And, he has all these scars all over him. They look like they were from knife wounds, some sort of round wounds from weapons of some sort most likely, and obvious animal bites.”

“Yes, he has been through a lot during his quest.” We should let him rest and Severus and I can fill you in on some things I know he would never tell anyone. Not confidences, but things that happened and he doesn’t want people to think he was bragging about. He’s not proud of some things he’s had to do.